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Closed Loop: I Killed My Former Self Twenty Years Ago
墨書 Inktalez
As the roll-up door emitted a piercing metallic screech, Alan was fumbling for his keys. He stared at the door that should have been locked, now slowly rising half a meter, a chill creeping up the back of his neck. The August evening breeze carried the scent of machine oil into the garage, while the moonlight cast distorted shadows on the concrete floor.
“Damn it,” he muttered, crouching down to inspect the lock. His fingers brushed against the still-wet lubricant on the track. Perhaps it was just an aging spring, he reassured himself as he ducked into this makeshift home converted from an old garage. In the corner, a Yamaha YZF-R1 glimmered coldly in the moonlight; it was a second-hand motorcycle he had just acquired yesterday. The previous owner had mentioned that the engine always emitted a sound reminiscent of a crying baby.
The sharp noise of plastic scraping against concrete shattered the silence. Alan spun around abruptly; the chair was leaning at an odd angle beside the tool rack, as if kicked by an unseen force. He grabbed the crowbar leaning against the wall and swept the beam of his flashlight across every corner. The ventilation ducts were intact, tools in the toolbox were neatly arranged, and even screws lay sleeping in a glass jar.
“It’s definitely just a mouse,” he explained to the empty air, his throat tightening uncomfortably. His phone blinked with a ghostly blue light on its charging dock, its battery indicator already turning red. As he bent down to unplug it, the roll-up door suddenly let out a loud “clack,” sinking ten centimeters.
Cold sweat drenched Alan's back in an instant. He snatched up the crowbar and dashed outside; streetlights cast web-like halos on the empty road. Not even a stray cat was within thirty meters—only his own shadow twisted into strange shapes on the concrete. When he turned back, the roll-up door had returned to its initial half-open state, and the lubricant on the track shimmered like snake scales under the moonlight.
It was then that the motorcycle began to vibrate.
At first, it was just a slight tremor in the rearview mirror, but soon the exhaust emitted a whimpering resonance. Alan's repair manual slipped off the seat, pages flipping rapidly in the draft until it landed on "Electrical Fault Diagnosis." He pressed his hand against the fuel tank; rhythmic thumping pulsed beneath its cold metallic surface, as if a living heart were hidden within this steel shell.
“Damn! Damn!” he cursed fiercely as he lifted the seat cushion. The beam of his flashlight flickered momentarily as it swept over the engine compartment. The inner side of the leather seat was embroidered with "J.M.1998" in golden thread—the initials of its previous owner, Jack Morrison. Alan recalled Old Jack’s bloodshot eyes when he picked up the bike last month: “This bike... better not be powered on at night.”
What lay beneath the seat now made his stomach churn—dense scratch marks covered the metal base plate, those intersecting lines were clearly not made by tools but rather... fingernails. In the center of those scratches, someone had painted an inverted pentagram in red paint; dark red liquid seeped from its cracked surface and trickled down into the drainage channel.
At that moment, his phone screen went completely black. The roll-up door let out a dying groan as it slammed shut with a thunderous crash. Alan lunged for the door; catching one last glimpse of moonlight revealed something unusual on the track—three fresh metal scratches that matched precisely in spacing and curvature to those on his motorcycle.
As darkness engulfed the entire space, he heard a metallic distortion behind him. The outline of the Yamaha swelled and warped in shadow; suddenly, its headlight burst forth with blood-red light, illuminating an old yellowed photograph on the wall: a group photo taken when Old Jack's garage opened in 1998, where beside him stood a young man clad in leather—a motorcycle beneath him gleaming with that same crimson glow as now.
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